Posts by Ed Deckard

Foreign Aid

Let's clear up a couple of common misconceptions.

Foreign aid as practiced by the USA is not a free gift. Most often it's an incentive for a foreign government. You may question the morality of handing tens of millions of dollars worth of aid a year to the Kingdom of Randomistan or the Republica Bananera Centroamericana in exchange for their cooperation in the War on Terror/War on Drugs but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than invading and occupying.

(Me, I'm all for ending the Wars on Nouns but that's beside the point).

Foreign aid as practiced by the USA is not a cash reward. It's (usually) more in the nature of store credit: "We'll give you $200 million worth of credit but you can only buy items we approve from suppliers we approve at prices they set." A lot of the time the purchases are actually carried out by the US Gov't itself and the goods simply delivered, for example in rearming the Afghan security forces. Effectively it's a subsidy of US industry.

Much of the time, foreign aid as practiced by the USA is not a gift at all. It's simply a low-interest loan. And when the Friendly Tyrant of an Unfriendly Country gets overthrown, guess who gets to pay for the bullets said Friendly Tyrant has been putting in the Unfriendly Natives all these years?

So, yeah, by all means USA should cut foreign aid. After all, it's not like it buys the USA influence way out of proportion to expenditure AND appeases the dirty longhair libruls, right?

Right?

The thing about the F-16, see

it can carry BVR missiles too.

Actually, humour is one of Britain's great cultural exports

I speak of Mr. Bean and Benny Hill, of course.

You mean the one

where government is bad and poor people are stupid so we should give all our money to a cult?

I guess my point might have gone a bit over your head

If I sue you for patent infringement, I'm claiming I own a particular idea, and that you're using it without my permission.

Your potential defense is (obviously) that

a) You're not actually using the idea in question, (your method is not covered by my patent) or

b) That you actually have my permission (it was included in some licensing agreement, etc and I'm just confused or being a jerk) or

c) I don't actually own the idea (my patent is invalid).

Now, it seems pretty self-evident to me that if I don't actually own the idea (my patent is invalid) you should be able to point that out in court.

Now, you make the argument that by allowing you to claim my patent is invalid in court, you'd be placing the burden of proof on me to prove that my patent is valid. This is the common, natural way in any other kind of lawsuit - the plaintiff (the person making the claim) is supposed to prove their claim is true. I don't see why patent holders should be privileged by the assumptions that they were truthful to the USPTO, and that said office conscientiously only issues absolutely watertight patents. That last one in particular is utterly laughable.

You also claim that this would make suing people for patent infringement more expensive and defense easier, to which I say, that's a huge point in favor of my argument.

It means

each sheep became pregnant an average of 1.813 times.

My brother was killed by a tree octopus.

True story.

Nope

Dreadnought class (the original): 11 inch (maximum) belt

Yamato class (the largest): 410 mm (16.14 inch) belt

Vanguard class (the last built): 14 inch (maximum) belt

Iowa class (the last in service): 12.1 inch (maximum) belt

The *tard thing is old and not funny

And this is a particularly egregious example.

Hellafail

Defined as Fail(10^27).

If i4i sued Hell

I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in an El Reg comments thread.

Errr

IANAL, but from what I understand a person's sexual preference for the underaged are not in and of themselves outlawed, the possession of images of abuse are.

"Yes, he's been found in possession of 500 grams of brown heroin but he's not a junkie so it's okay."

Interesting, but

I think you should have posted this as AC

Case was "dismissed without prejudice"

Which means he hasn't been put in jeopardy of anything quite yet.

The case was never tried so the prosecution gets another shot.

This confuses me as well

The only way I can make sense of it is if it means that you "save" more energy by going from non-ideal to ideal settings on the dryer than you do changing from ideal settings to line drying.

Or they're counting the energy from the Sun.

I run a business, a fairly successful one

And word of mouth from happy customers is the best publicity you could possibly have.

Dear Studentrights,

My understanding (derived entirely from the Reg's coverage) is that this goes beyond the typical reception problems encountered when other phones are held certain ways, and is derived from the antenna not being insulated. The possibility of some kind of assembly issue was also explored early on but has mostly been dropped from the discussion I think.

As you pointed out, the potential problem is mentioned in many phone manuals. Part of the problem is that it's *not* mentioned in the iPhone manual.

Much of the rest is mostly because the company (and some of its fans) have been in deep denial that the problem even exists, making every possible excuse from "it's all in your head" through "you aren't holding it right" to "bars display software bug." Some have even suggested a media conspiracy to harm Apple, because, as we know, journalists *hate* Steve Jobs.

Sincerely,

Ed Deckard

P.S.: Flame icon because I tried very hard not to write one.

A scientist is biased

if his work shows bias.

Mine's the one with the Grammar Nazi insignia on the lapels.